#street-heart-posts

[randomlyjay]

@street-heart-posts replied to your photo: “I got a lot more ears than @fakesurprise! :D”:

for catching and hugging passing clouds ��

YUP! I’m really good at catching and releasing them and doing lots of helpings for them! :D

[writteninjoy2]

Let us go for a drive perhaps a flight then walk haphazardly towards the sea you and me

[dustseeker]

Thanks for the tag, wonderful @street-heart-posts! These are my answers today. They were different yesterday, and they might change again tomorrow …

1. Why do you have this blog? What is the purpose of this blog? I was simply looking for an online place to share a little writing etc. & more or less accidentally stumbled into Tumblr (which isn’t that big in Norway), surprised & inspired to find so much great poetry & then I heard The Voice saying “Gisle, you’re going to write poetry in English from now on” & so I did. Or. Tried too, anyway.

2. What is your opinion of therapy and poetry/writing as a therapeutic tool? It’s something that I think about as little as possible. I guess I’ve always been reluctant to treat poetry (or the arts in general) as something else than poetry. I try not to think of art as a tool for anything at all, be it self-development, politics, ideology, therapy, religion etc. Having said that: Yes, obviously there is a therapeutic side to writing & of course poetry can and will have an impact ‘outside of itself’. But it’s not why I write. Hehe.

3. What kind of poetry do you like? The boring truth: I like many different styles. And I like to try out different things myself. I guess what I always return to, is poetry that is simple and stunning, scarce and rich, earthbound and larger than life. I like the x thing that takes you home in a second. The y thing that unexpectedly leads you somewhere new. The z thing that reveals a tiny mystery, without explaining it. I like a poem that feels like a ritual. I like a poem that makes me feel human. I like a poem that doesn’t add up. I like a poem that is warm, tender, smooth, lovable. I like a poem that is rough, edgy & hard-to-love. I don’t like a poem that is nothing but a political statement. I don’t dislike a good poem because it contains a political statement.

4. What do you think is the purpose of poetry? Ok. I guess it’s time to reveal it. Here’s what really happened.        Nature & Culture had been in love for thousands of years, when they finally decided to marry. They had a child, and the child was named Language.        Language grew up and fell in love with Angel. But their parents, Nature & Culture and Heaven & Time, didn’t approve, and so Language & Angel weren’t allowed to marry. But the two young lovers defied their parents and met secretely as often as they could. And after a few centuries, their illegitimate lovechild was born. They named it Poetry.        Now this is where it gets interesting, if you enjoy a good conspiracy. You see, in light of recent discoveries, there is proof to indicate that it has all been part of a greater plan from the very beginning: Poetry is the combined effort from Nature, Culture, Heaven, and Time to find a way to tell every single human being important stuff about life on Mars, love on Earth, history in the making, the secrets of dark matter & the mysteries of even darker coffee.        Exactly what it is that they’re trying to tell us, I’ve yet to figure out. Maybe it’s something that we need to answer for ourselves, each and one of us. But I’m pretty sure that Poetry is here to help.

5. What subject matter would you like to see covered by poetry?        1) Science & the universe. Macrocosmos. Galaxies. Comets. Distance. Time. Microcosmos. Cells. Molecules. Atoms. Neutrons. Sound. Light. Matter. Energy. I love that stuff & it begs for poetic treatment.        2) Social issues. I’m not going to make a list, but obviously there are lots of things to write about, globally as well as locally. But it’s tricky. Because if the issue becomes too dominant in a poem, the poetry jumps out of the window. And most of the times, I think I prefer to read an in-depth article, not a poem, about social issues (cf. my answer to question 2).

6. What is the purpose of Tumblr? At least I can say what its purpose is to me: 1) To write. 2) To read. 3) To communicate.        I’ve been careful not to make a Facebook-kind-of-thing out of my Tumblr. That being said, of course I’ve been talking to a lot of people, and I have read & met some truly amazing and wonderful poets & people via Tumblr. I am very happy to say that some of them have become true friends.        One thing though. I’ve never received any anon hate. And I don’t think I can consider myself to be a true Tumblr poet until I do. Help me out, anyone?

[gabrielgadfly]

17

17. What book influenced you the most as a child? As an adult?Most of my early reading as a child were fantasy adventure books. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was the first book I remember reading independently, and from there I launched into reading series like The Shannara and Wheel of Time series.As an adult, my reading tastes shifted. Although I’d written poetry since childhood, I started getting serious about it when I was about 16. Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet was easily the most influential book for me in that regard. It’s the book that made me want to become a poet.

[mycosmicbackyard]

street-heart-posts replied to your post “You may hear them in the smell of the woods of Norse, not to be seen...”

Magic

Thank you so much beautiful @street-heart-posts, so grateful!

[randomlyjay]

“Excuse me?” The other members of the work crew snigger behind me. 

The boy in the middle of Birch Street with his left ear pressed to the pavement looks up. And grins. He’s eleven, and his grin stops every  snigger. It’s bigger than a blessing, and there is so much joy that it hurts.

I mean to ask what he’s doing here, to say that we’ve closed the street off. I make an inarticulate noise. 

“Hi! I’m Jay,” he says happily. “And - oh! You’re here to work, and I did a helping since I have totally hugged the street and helped it post online, since @street-heart-posts posts so I thought other streets should too!”

“... I have no idea what you just said.”

“I said it jaysomely though I bet!”

He looks worried. The same instinct that tells me when to check on my kids says I don’t want him worried. “You did. But we’d like to get to work?”

“I’m not allowed to help with work at all.” He lets out a huge sigh, then informs us he has to find a new adventure. And then goes running down the road so fast I almost think he vanishes from sight. 

I look at everyone else. They look as dazed as I feel. We get to work, and there isn’t a single problem or issue the entire day.

That night I have to log into my work account, which insists on a captcha where you have to examine a street, click every street sign and solve it. The picture is of Birch Street. I call Emma, and Daq. They say it’s the same for them. 

I check other websites I know use captchas, and the picture is Birth Street for everyone. I have no idea what this means, but I think I’m better off never knowing. 

[randomlyjay]

@street-heart-posts replied to your post: “GUESS WHAT?! I’m doing a sleeping now so you don’t need to guess!!”:

Is this what is called sneak waking?

I am really sneaky like a Jay!

[mikefrawley]

Reblog (Thank You) Love

Greetings dear friends, and I will try keep this brief as I’m currently at lunch.  As a few of you have no doubt already noticed, I don’t reblog very much any more.  Still on occasion I enjoy giving a little reblog love to a few special souls that I’m blessed to call friends.  I have a couple in mind today that I’ll share in a bit.  Before I say why I reblog, I do want to add that they’re both awesome writers, and I always enjoying seeing their words on my dash.  Now having said that, while this may not be politically correct by social media standards, my reblogs have ALWAYS been thank yous to some extent, and I’m okay with that.  Seeing as I did promise to be brief, I’ll close with a big thank you hug sent to a couple of very kind and talented favorites.  Special thank you to @street-heart-posts, @heartsacrossthestreet and @lzlabs, @lzlabseesu Love to all, Mike <3